An Analysis of a 21st Century Philippine Literature entitled
Preludes by Daryll Delgado
They say marriage is a lock, it takes two to tango. Both parties should be devoted to loving, trusting, and respecting one another, as well as being responsible for each other's happiness and sorrow. But have you ever wondered, why do people still cheat? If you've been cheated on and had the chance to take revenge, will you take it? Will you do your own justice and be his/her karma? Or will you let nature take its course?
In this story, we'll see how a wife will deal with her sinful paramour.
BACKGROUND
Biographical / Authorial information:
Daryll Delgado is a Filipino fictional author who is known for her poetry and other literature works. One of them is a short story called “Preludes'', which is found in the 21st Century Literature book . The theme of this story revolves around the act of concubine, or having an affair while the couple is married.
Daryll has a BA in Journalism and MA in Comparative Literature from the University of the Philippines. She has been a lecturer at the University of the Philippines, the Ateneo de Manila University, and Miriam College. She currently works for the Southeast Asia office of an international labor and human rights NGO headquartered in Massachusetts.
Daryll Delgado was born and raised in Tacloban City but resides in Quezon City with her husband.
Textual information:
Daryll Delgado’s first book, After the Body Displaces Water (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2012), won the thirty-second Manila Critics Circle/Philippines National Book Award for best book of short fiction in English, and was a finalist for the 2013 Madrigal-Gonzales First Book Award.
She also received a Philippines Free Press award for her fiction in 2010. She has received writing residencies in Australia, Spain, and the Philippines and holds degrees in journalism and comparative literature from the University of the Philippines – Diliman.
She has taught in the University of the Philippines, Ateneo De Manila University, and Miriam College. She presently works for an international labor rights NGO, where she heads the research and stakeholder engagement programs for Southeast Asia and writes global reports on labor issues.
Sociocultural information:
Under the Philippine law, when a woman is guilty of adultery she commits a crime, while for a man, the crime is not adultery but concubinage. In our country, there is one set of laws for women, and another set of laws for men, which shows that laws in the Philippines are patriarchal in nature, and seem to favor men over women.
This double standard is not only seen in our laws, but in Philippine society as well, where one set of rules seems to prevail for women, while another set of rules seem to prevail for men.
COPY OF THE LITERARY TEXT
PRELUDES
A man died singing. He had sung a total of three songs before he heaved his last breath and collapsed on a chair. It happened at the Municipal Hall. The time was three in the afternoon. The sun was high. Heat seeped into people's bones. Tuba warmed their blood even more. Someone's ninth death anniversary was being celebrated. Another man's life in that party ended. It ended on a high note.
At that very moment, Nenita, the wife, was at home, picking leaves for a medicinal brew. Earlier that day, Nenita had been lying on the sofa, slipping in and out of an afternoon sleep she should not have heeded, embracing Willy Revillame in her dreams. She had had no plans of taking a nap. She had just wanted to catch a glimpse of Willy after she sent off her grandson for the city, just before she resumed her cooking.
At the sala, she opened the window to let some breeze in. But the air was so dry. Outside it was very quiet. Everyone was at the Hall, to attend the ninth death anniversary of the juez. Most of them bore the judge a grudge, but they were all there anyway, eager to see what kind of feast his children had prepared. The children had all come home from America and Europe for this very important occasion in the dead man's journey. Nenita herself did not mind the judge really, even if she had always found him rather severe. It was the wife whom Nenita did not feel very comfortable with. There had been some very persistent rumors involving the judge's wife that Nenita did not care so much for.
As soon as Nenita was certain that her grandson had left, she positioned the electric fan in front of her, sat on the sofa, and turned on the TV to catch the last segment of her favorite show. The next thing she knew, Willy Revillame was pulling her into his arms, soothing her with words of condolences, before handing her some cash and offering his left cheek for a kiss. There was a huge applause from the studio audience, even if they were all weeping with Willie, shaking their heads in amazement.
Nenita forced herself out of the dream and the motion brought her entire body up and out of the sofa. She found herself standing in the middle of the sala, face-to-face with a teary-eyed Willy. Her heart was beating wildly. Her armpits were soaked in sweat. Her hair bun had come undone. She looked around guiltily, she thought she heard her husband swear at her. She felt her husband's presence in the living room with her, even if she knew he was at the death anniversary party. She quickly turned off the TV and made her way to the kitchen.
She should not have taken that nap, Nenita berated herself. There was an urgent order for ten dozens of suman she had to deliver the next day, for the judge's daughters who were leaving right after the anniversary. There was already a pile of pandan leaves on the kitchen table, waiting to be washed and warmed, for wrapping the sweet sticky rice rolls with.
She had spent all night until early morning boiling the sticky rice and mixing it with anise, caramel and coconut milk, until her hands trembled and the veins swelled. By the time she was almost done, she had to prepare breakfast and brew a special tea concoction for her grandson who had spent all night drinking. Her grandson had very barely made it home-drunk as fish, crying out a woman's name like a fool-early that morning.
Nenita then remembered that she also had to prepare the medicinal tea her husband needed to take with his dinner. She had yet to complete the five different kinds of leaves, Ampalaya, Banaba, Bayabas, Dumero, Hierba Buena; the last one she purchases from a man who only comes to town on Thursdays. She was getting ready to pick Ampalaya and Bayabas leaves from her garden when she heard her husband's voice again, his singing voice. She realized that the sound was coming all the way from the Hall. The sound was very faint, but more than perceptible, and certainly unmistakable to her.
It was the sound she could hear when she stepped out of the house and started picking the leaves. Everything else around her was quiet and still .It seemed as though the entire town-the dogs, the frogs, and the birds included-had gone silent for this very rare event: her husband singing again.
She had not heard her husband sing this way in a very long time, ever since he became ill-when the sugar and alcohol in his blood burned the sides of his heart, almost getting to the core of it. Since then, he would get out of breath when he sang. And he also easily forgot the lyrics, especially to the Italian classics, and some of the Tagalog Kundiman he used to be very well known for.
Nenita herself never understood all the fuss about her husband's singing, and the fuss his brothers and sisters made when he stopped singing. She could not even understand half of the songs he sang. They were mostly in Italian, Spanish, and Tagalog. He rarely sang Bisaya songs, the ones she could understand, and actually liked, even if she herself could not carry a tune to save her life. Thankfully, their grandson was there to indulge her husband in music talk. She was happier listening to the two of them talk and sing, and strum guitar strings, from the kitchen.
She used to feel slighted whenever her siblings-in-law recalled with such intense, exaggerated regret, the way their brilliant brother squandered his money and his talent, and oh, all the wrong decisions he made along the way. Including, though they would never say directly, his decision to marry Nenita. They liked to remind their brother, themselves, and anyone who cared to listen, of what their brother used to be, what he could have been, whom he could have been married to. Nenita ceased to mind this, and them, a long time ago. She had forgiven all of them. They were all dead now, save for one brother who lived in the city. She never stopped praying for their souls, but she was not very sorry that they died.
Nenita knew that her husband was happy the way he was. She never heard him complain. He had nothing to complain about. She took him back every time his affairs with other women turned sour. She took care of him when he started getting sick, when the part of his heart that was supposed to beat started merely murmuring and whistling. Thankfully, her friend, the herbalista, had just the right concoction for this ailment. Even the doctors were delighted with her husband's progress.
Nenita took her husband back again when, with the money her in-laws sent for his medication, he went away to be with one of his women. People say her husband went to Manila with the judge's widow. Nenita never confirmed this. Nenita never asked. She just took her husband back. Nursed him back to health again. After that, though, Nenita noticed that he spent more and more time alone, in the toilet. And when she asked if he needed help with anything, he would just mumble incoherently. So she let him be.
She could have prepared him then that other brew her herbalista friend had suggested at the time, the one that would make his balls shrink, give him hallucinations, make his blood boil until his veins popped. But she didn't, of course.
She did buy and continued to keep the packet of dried purple leaves said to be from a rare vine found only in Mt. Banahaw. She didn't even know where Mt. Banahaw was, only that it was up there in the North. She did know that she would never use the herbs, even if she wanted to keep, see, touch, and feel the soft lump of leaves in her palm, every now and then. She derived some sense of security, a very calming sense of power, in knowing that she had that little packet hidden in one of the kitchen drawers.
She listened more closely to her husband's singing. She closed her eyes and trapped her breath in her throat, the way she did when she listened to the beats and murmurs of her husband's heart at night. Listening to the air that carried her husband's voice this way, she almost caught the sound of his labored breathing, and his heart's irregular beating.
He was singing a popular Spanish song now, about kissing someone for the last time. Nenita remembered being told by her husband that that was what it was about. Kiss me more, kiss me more, that was what the man wanted to tell the woman he loved. Nenita found that she could enjoy this one; the song was recognizable. She laughed lightly as she found herself swaying in slow, heavy movements, to the music of her husband's voice.
She started imagining herself as a young woman, dancing with this beautiful, dark man who eventually became her husband. And then she heard him choke, heave a breath before he sang: Perderte. Long pause. Perderte. Another pause. Despues. And then there was applause, in which Nenita joined, still laughing at her silliness
After that, all was quiet again.
Nenita gathered the leaves and went back inside the house. Just as well, because it was starting to be very, intolerably, hot outside. Certainly hot enough to boil an old man's blood and pop his veins, she thought.ANALYSIS
Literary Genre
Based on our readings and research about Preludes by Daryll Delgado, we can say that its literary genre is a short story. It is a great short story that is widely known to be included in the 21st Century Literature book and it's all around the internet.
As we read through it, we can easily see the characteristics of a short story. From the length of the story and how it revolves around the daily errands of Nenita, and how she caught her husband having an affair with other women. ”Preludes” focuses only on Nenita's husband’s infidelity which is the same with a short story, usually having a single subject and theme. Aside from that, the story only revolves in one setting, which is in Nenita's house, which is also possessed by a short story. Lastly, it strangely started with an ending and ended abruptly which left us thinking if Nenita knew what happened to her husband.
Process Questions / Analysis Guides
What is a prelude? Why is that the title of the story?
Since the word "pre" denotes "before", a prelude is an initial action, event, or performance that precedes a larger or more important action. In simple terms , prelude is an introduction that offers the audience or readers a better understanding of the whole story .
The story was titled "Preludes' ' because from the very first paragraph, it will already give the readers an idea about what will happen in the story, even the main conflict of it. If we look into its meaning, it can be deduced that it's not just simply the death of the man. The man's action, singing 3 songs and died after, isn't actually for the judge, but for himself for the reason that he already knew that he would soon take his last breath. Also, more important events or information was told after the introduction of the story, corresponding to the meaning of prelude.
What does Nenita feel for her husband? Why do you think she feels that way?
Nenita has neither tireless love nor hatred for her husband. He deceives her yet she goes on with her life. Nenita believes it's not her own responsibility to voice her opinion on her husband's behavior, let alone take her action. As a result, she does her own things as, without a doubt, his obedient wife.
What does her herbalista friend feel about Nenita's husband?
Nenita's herbalist friend is the one who helps her to treat and improve her husband's progress, but also the one who tried to convince her to dose her husband with a poisonous brew that will make his blood boil until his veins popped to stop him from committing more and more affairs.
Who was the man that died in the first paragraph?
In the first paragraph, people were celebrating the Judge’s ninth death anniversary, where another man died while singing about Nenita’s sickly and unfaithful husband, whose name wasn't mentioned in the literary text.
How do you think he died? What clues in the text helped you to reach that conclusion?
Yes, he died because he was ill, but there was more to it, which is why we had to read it again. "Who killed the husband?" was one of the book's guide questions. This leads us to believe that Nenita's husband was murdered. However, we had no idea if it was really her who had done it. Nenita's husband cheated on her multiple times, and she either didn't noticed or pretended she didn't. According to a psychologist, there are various reasons why a man would cheat, such as immaturity, selfishness, and unrealistic expectations, which implies that he believes in something that his spouse cannot provide and hence seeks it elsewhere (Weiss, 2017). Her husband certainly had the same motives, but regardless of how cruelly he treated her, Nenita continued to nurse him. She killed him slowly, using something so no one could suspect it was her. That leads to a conclusion that the reason why she kept nursing him despite his cheating was because she was planning something evil.
What is the importance of the dried purple leaves? Do you think that these were used in the story? How?
Probably, Nenita used the purple leaves as a weapon to kill her husband. In the story, the purple leaves serve as the gun that killed Nenita's husband. It's possible she didn't use it directly and just used it as a motive to kill her husband, or she mixed it into her husband's herbal tea, slowly killing him.
Who killed the man? Explain your answer.
The man who died at the beginning of the story is Nenita's husband. We assumed that the man died simply because of his heart illness and from receiving too much heat from the sun. However, as we discussed this question, we saw in the middle of the story that her husband had numerous affairs. Although Nenita appeared to be negligent with this and simply allowed her husband to return to her and nurse him when he was ill, this still gave us the idea that Nenita slowly murdered her husband, using something that no one could suspect was her. She may not show concern, but maybe she was deeply hurt by her husband's multiple affairs.
The story ends with the feeling of heat. What are the many meanings of heat in the story?
The first meaning of heat at the end of the story is the physical heat that Nenita felt as she was outside their house looking for some leaves. The second meaning of the heat is her anger at her husband and her disappointment from her husband's affairs that she does not show to others, which is why she only keeps it for herself.
Why is it ironic that the widow was married to a judge?
First, ironic means contrary to what a person might expect. It was ironic that the widow was married to the judge because as we may notice, he was described as someone who misuses his money, cheats on his wife and is disliked by his community. Who would want to marry a man like that, right? It was also mentioned that there were certain rumors about the widow which might be breaking the law, and then suddenly she'll marry a judge, an official of the law, which is truly ironic.
Do you think, with what happened, that some kind of justice was served? Why or why not?
When Nenita was able to get revenge on her husband by killing him, it could be considered a form of justice. This was his consequence for being unfaithful. Despite this, what Nenita did was a terrible decision. She should have simply divorced her husband and left him to suffer for himself.
Contextual Analysis
Using the Sociocultural Context, it can be concluded that the short story "Preludes" by Daryll Delgado is all about a married man's unfaithfulness towards his wife without getting the right punishment for it. When the text was written, the society was under the Philippine law where when a woman is guilty of adultery, she commits a crime, while for a man, the crime is not adultery but concubinage. It shows that society back then still seemed to favor men over women. This explains how Nenita's husband, and even the judge, got away from the punishment of committing infidelity.
SUMMARY
Daryll Delgado's short story "Preludes" is about adultery or infidelity, which parallels how society was back then, and how it impacts a lover's relationship. "A man died singing," according to the first sentence of the story, which gave a hint as to what transpired next. The next sections are about a judge's death anniversary, which everyone disliked but who was, nevertheless, invited because a feast had been arranged. The following paragraphs focuses on the main character, Nenita, and how she fantasized about being carried in the arms of Willy Revillame, a popular TV host.
The flow will now be a little darker from the climax until the end, as it discusses her husband's heart condition and death. The very aspect of this part that describes it as "dark" was Nenita's friend, the herbalista, who tried to persuade her to poison her husband in order to prevent him from having more affairs. Nenita's husband cheated on her numerous times, which she initially didn't mind. But as the saying goes, "Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair". This is how nenita, the wife of a cheater, feels. Despite the fact that his wife accepted him back into their home, she still watched her husband suffer and get the karma he deserves. "People who create their own drama deserves their own karma". A sinful paramour will never get away from karma's punishment.
REFERENCES
Book/s
Delgado, D. (2013). “Preludes”. After the Body Displaces Water. Manila: “University of Santo Tomas”.
Online Sources
Delgado, D. (2013). Preludes. Retrieved from
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/daryll-delgado
https://raedthemanuel.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/preludes/
https://www.coursehero.com/file/40852177/PRELUDESpptx/
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